


A Little Birdy Yelled At Me

by Cryoclasm



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adventure, Bad Ideas are the most fun ones, Existential Crisis, Gen, Hard Magic Systems, Humor, Multi, Really it's more of a Shoulder Jackass, Screaming, Soft Magic Systems, Worldbuilding, lots of screaming, shoulder angel, shoulder devil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22270252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryoclasm/pseuds/Cryoclasm
Summary: The parlance goes: If some Random Omnipotent Being yanks you into another dimension without so much as a by-your-leave, it probably needs your help with something. That being said, the rules therein are surprisingly flexible; no one said you needed a physical body to do your job, after all. Now, how am I gonna convince this kid that I’m not a hallucination…? [OC/Shoulder-Angel Insert]
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. The Ship of Me-Seus

This must be what it feels like to grow old and waste away.  
  
Last I recall, I was twenty-something years old, but it bears repeating.  
  
This must be what it feels like to grow old and waste away.  
  
In a manner of speaking.  
  
There are these certain expectations that come with the grand package of generalized sapience which we’ve come to take for granted. For different people, this can mean different things, with different interpretations and different evaluations.  
  
Maybe it’s our senses, with which we gain an understanding that there is something _else_ besides oneself, an unending expanse of primal viscerality that only a wild happenstance of biochemistry could possibly parse into something our oblivious minds could understand.  
  
Maybe it’s our feelings, an indecipherable mass of roiling, bubbling selfhood that spawns such an integral part of the human experience. A meshwork of countless disconnected organic compounds on the face of it, but deeply responsible for laughter, for fury, for love, for indifference, for satisfaction, for guilt, for happiness, sadness and everything in between.  
  
Maybe it’s our minds, with which we aspire to answer a single question: _why?_ Why is this thing the way that it is? Why is the world the way that it is? Why are _we_ the way that we are? In an existential manner of speaking, _why is?_ Ten million questions, twenty million answers, and billions of people that are still searching for their own perfect solution, each in their own way.  
  
What have I taken for granted? All of these, in a way, and none of these, in a way.  
  
See, what I’ve lost is _control._  
  
I don’t really mean that in the mental health sense, or the geopolitical sense. I mean that in the… _me_ sense.  
  
If that makes sense.  
  
...shit, okay, let me try and explain myself.  
  
When someone grows old, at least in the modern day, they have to deal with the fact that their body is deteriorating and that, eventually, they’re not going to be able to do some of the things that once came to them like second nature. Old people, almost universally, have experienced this. They understand this.  
  
But they also understand that the physical reality is nowhere near as harsh a blow as the mental realization.  
  
This actually happens a lot in hospice care. People break down over time, and every once in a while, a caregiver needs to remind someone that _no, they can’t do that anymore._ Enough reminders, and the reality of it sinks in.  
  
Not the physical one, mind you, the _mental_ one. That creeping, cold pit of understanding that says _I am no longer in control, oh god I’m actually dying._  
  
This is pretty close to describing what I’m going through right now. This gaping maw of unfathomability stems from the fact that I just can’t physically process my current state of affairs.  
  
That state of affairs being the fact that I am… probably dead, but more to the point, that I _no longer have a physical body._  
  
By extension, _I am completely devoid of sensation._ At least, in the human sense.  
  
There’s no good way to describe this, really, primarily because describing the complete and total lack of something isn’t particularly easy. I cannot _see_ , because I have zero physical reference for the human definition of _seeing_ or _eyes._ I cannot _hear_ , because I have zero physical conception of _sound,_ or _ears,_ or _location._ I cannot _touch,_ because I have exactly no limbs, no nerves, no brain, and no body to house it all. Not a _single fucking thing._ I’d call it suffocating but… well, you get it.  
  
The fact that I could panic or get angry over this should have given me some measure of solace, that I wasn’t completely gone, but even that hasn’t emerged unscathed. Associating the concept of panic with light-headedness and heart palpitations, or anger with the roiling heat in my gut just automatically falls short because my mind literally can’t marry the idea together with physical organs that I no longer possess.  
  
The consequence of this is that each and every one of these emotions is both _real_ and _unreal_ in a way I can’t possibly put into words. I don’t _control_ these emotions, so much as they just _happen_ in what passes for my mind. There is no sensation associated with the feeling, it just exists in a way that feels both unbelievably personal and laughably distant.  
  
There is no impetus to act, but also no sense of restraint. It just… _is._ Honestly, that’s about the closest descriptor I could possibly assign to this entire situation. It’s so far beyond my ability to categorize that all I have left is a pointless tautology.  
  
It just _is._  
  
All that I really have is my mind, and the fact that I can think. I have control over nothing else.  
  
I don’t know if this is what death is like. I don’t remember how I died. I don’t remember _if_ I died.  
  
Cogito ergo sum.  
  
I think, therefore I am.  
  
...But if that’s all I am, then _what am I?_  
  
…  
  
…  
  
And then there was light.  
  
I hadn’t even begun mourning the abrupt, violent death of my impromptu existential theory before I was bombarded with _oh god stimulus and stimulus and more stimulus and none of it makes sense -_  
  
Somewhere in the torrent of what-the-fuck overload, I vaguely realized that hey, my sense of time was back. This was quickly followed by the realization that that was very much _not a good thing right now_ , seeing as I could now fully appreciate the warped timescale of every one of my newfound senses trying its level best to re-educate me in the ways of projectile nausea. It wasn’t doing very well, seeing as I still didn’t have a stomach with which to hurl, but that was a cold comfort when everything still felt like _inside and outside and now and forever and always-has-been and never-shall-be and_ -  
  
Oop, and here comes my sense of spatial awareness, which is still fucking incomprehensible because I’m automatically trying to make a reference point to a physical body that doesn’t bloody exist and _oh god it keeps firing_ and now I’m _everywhere and nowhere and I’m right here and WHERE THE DICKS IS HERE -_  
  
Oh god, I was wrong. I mean, I was sorta right, but I was mainly wrong, because these totally _were_ senses! This clusterfuck must be some kind of… remapping to better handle the reality of whatever the fuck I currently am! Which, mind you, is still pretty awful because exactly none of it was making sense yet and _oh it’s getting worse fuck shit wait wait waIT WAIT WAIT -  
  
 **WHAM.**_  
  
… Oh… oh I think I just whited out a bit there, which is weird because, again, no physical body and -  
  
Wait a fucking minute. Did… did I just fall back onto describing my senses as physical constructs without another one of those goddamn feedback loops? But - but I’m still not physical, and I certainly don’t feel physical, so how -  
  
 _Oh sweet pine-scented Christ that is weird._  
  
It just - what just - _huh?_  
  
I - how is this even _working?_ I’m getting this perfectly instinctual sense of ‘I am here’ and it feels so familiar, except there’s absolutely nothing about it that I recognize. Hell, I’m trying to parse my old physical sense of spatial awareness at the same time, and all I’m getting is that it’s ‘ _one_ way to perceive your surroundings’, not ‘ _the_ _only_ way to perceive your surroundings’.  
  
This is… honestly kinda creepy, now that I think about it. Whatever just happened there didn’t just change my senses, it changed my _perception_ of my senses, something I’ve held since the literal day I was born. Net benefit or not, it’s pretty unsettling to know that nothing in my mind is sacred.  
  
… Still, it made the whole sensory-overload-from-hell thing stop, so I suppose I have no choice other than to take it on the chin and move on.  
  
Speaking of which, where the hell am I? I focus for a bit, trying to zero in on the concept of _seeing_ -  
  
And then there was light. Again.  
  
Except this time I didn’t get carted off on another unsolicited brainblast. No, this time, it looks like I’m in a homely little hallway, parked right in front of a door.  
  
Down to my left, there’s a kid.  
  
No, I’m pretty sure I’m not seeing things, there is an actual human child below me. Blond, male, scrawny, regular-ass human as far as I can tell. I’m currently positioned four or so inches above his right shoulder.  
  
I look to the door again.  
  
There’s a small wooden slat nailed to it with the words “Jaune Arc” written on it in what looks like permanent marker.  
  
…  
…  
  
 _~Are you taking the actual, literal piss right now? Because it sure feels like you are,~_ I **say,** even though I have no clue how I did so without a mouth.  
  
The kid - sorry, Jaune Arc, _what the fuck_ \- nearly leaps out of his skin like a rabbit on a hotplate.  
  
“Bwah! - whuh-buh-wh-who was that?! I-I-I already took a piss b-but oh gods this house is haunted oh gods oh gods oh gods -”  
  
Oh.  
  
Oh this was gonna be a fucking _trip._


	2. Chapter 2: Screaming, Introductions, and More Screaming

A thought occurs.

I’m aware that this is a fictional world. I’m also aware that, as far as the internet is concerned, the concept of being lobbed headfirst into a fictional world is something of a literary maypole. Shit, I’ve read my lion’s share of isekai manga as well. So far as I’ve seen, circumstances like this should be positively mundane, at least by those standards.

Except nothing really prepares you for how unsettlingly _real_ everything looks.

Like, look at this shit. Jaune’s hair isn’t a low-poly yellow helmet, it’s _actual hair_ , with all the physics that entails. The hallway doesn’t look like it was made by an animator in Maya, it looks like it was made by an _actual real-life architect_ with _actual real-life materials._ Shit, even the lighting is imperfect and non-uniform - you know, like _real light fixtures!_

Even Jaune’s hyperventilating was one-to-one with real life, what with the redness and the sweating and the fact that he looks like he’s gonna pass _oh shit it looks like he’s gonna pass out._

Um. Okay. Think. Think!

~KID! Calm down already, I’m not a ghost!~ At which point I immediately regretted opening my dumb metaphorical mouth.

Way to go, idiot, start with the one thing you can’t definitively prove!

Welp, the kid’s stopped hyperventilating now, if only to start looking at the ceiling like it told him that he’d shit a pound of solid gold by sundown. “Uh - _whuh?_ You’re… literally talking inside of my head and I can’t see you. How is that anything else other than - _oh you’re inside my head._ Oh I’m crazy.”

Ah for fuck’s sake.

“I-I-I oh god I _must_ be crazy, I mean _ghosts_ what was I _thinking_ it’s obvious that I’m just totally off my shit and no _wonder_ I failed the Pharos Academy entrance exam they must have _known_ I was crazy or something and I don’t blame them who’d accept a Huntsman that had _voices in his head_ and oh gods I said _shit_ Mom’s gonna scrub my mouth out with Fire Dust -”

~BREATHE, GOD DAMN IT!~ I barely manage to get that in edgewise. How has this kid not blown a vessel in his brain by now?!

At least Jaune’s stopped talking now, and is taking deep, gulping breaths instead of launching into another panic spiel. I take my opportunity to try and settle the issue before it slips out of my control again.

~I’m not a ghost, and you’re not crazy. I’m just… listen, do you know what Aura is?~ 

At this, Jaune manages to straighten up slightly. “Y-Yeah? It’s that forcefield that Huntsmen use, right? I don’t have mine unlocked, though - Valean law says you only get that if you’re enrolled in a primary combat school or halfway through a military academy.”

Well _that’s_ interesting. Didn’t Jaune have no idea what Aura was when he started out at Beacon? Considering he just said he failed to get into this Pharos Academy - and the fact that he’s demonstrably shorter than I remember him from the show - it means I’m firmly in pre-canon territory. Coupled with the fact that non-enrolled trainees were barred from having Aura by law… did initiation-Jaune _really_ forget what Aura was, or was he trying to circumvent the law?

It was a dumbfuck idea to sneak into Beacon to achieve that end, regardless, but for now - 

~Huh. Well that’s weird. Hey, you got any Faunus in the family? Any grandparents with really good hearing, maybe?~

Jaune shook his head in the negative. “No, not since great-great-grandfather Julius’s wife, and even then, I’m pretty sure my dad said she was a chameleon Faunus or something. I don’t think my hearing’s any better or worse than normal.”

Well there goes both those flimsy outs. If he doesn’t have Aura, then a Semblance is out of the question. Not that I even know what his Semblance is, considering… ah…

Fine, there’s no easy way to put it: I, er, sorta procrastinated on watching any more of the series past the end of volume three.

Don’t look at me like that! I had classes to attend! And besides, I knew little bits and pieces from fanfiction, it’s just… um. There weren’t all that many of them that went past the end of volume three, and from the ones that did, I’m not entirely certain if some bits are real and if some bits are fanon…

I’m not going to have an easy time with this, am I?

Alright, guess it’s time to do this the hard way. Try shit until an explanation sticks. You know, the scientific method and all that. Now, where to start…

I try shifting my ‘body’ away from Jaune to see if I can just go and do my own thing, and _wow_ does it feel weird to feel literally zero resistance or weight. I’m not very fast, but I slide away from his shoulder at about a reasonable walking pace.

This only lasts until I get about, eyeball estimate, five metres away, at which point I start feeling this odd throbbing pressure in my mind, and my 'body' refuses to move any further. The only adequate comparison I can make is… it’s like trying to snap a slingshot strap by stretching it with your face.

Guess that’s my limit, huh? Next on the list, then, no dallying.

~Hey Jaune, how old are you?~

“Twelve, why?”

~Never hurts to know.~ 

Never hurts, indeed. I was roughly five years ahead of volume one, which meant I had plenty of time to get my bearings and figure out why I’m attached to _Jaune_ , of all people. I mean, why’d I get stuck with the hamfisted shonen-manga archetype? Literally stuck, considering I’m on some kind of soul-leash! At the risk of sounding petty, why didn’t I get someone more interesting, like Weiss? Or Sun? Or Coco?!

**Where’s mah Coco?!**

Hrgh. Moving on.

~I’m gonna try a bunch of stuff and see what works, okay Jaune?~ I venture. I’ve got a couple theories, and I’d need his help to figure out just what I’m capable of doing - or allowed to do. If there’s a hidden set of rules hanging above my head, I’m going to suss it out before it bites me in my incorporeal ass.

“Uh, sure?”

~Neat. First, try saying the sentence “She sells seashells by the seashore” in your head.~

He closes his eyes and… nothing.

“Did it work?”

~Nnnope. Try again, except think of it like you’re talking to something sitting on your right shoulder.~ 

His eyes flit over to his shoulder momentarily, and he looks mildly constipated until -

‘-sells seashells by the she - ah, crap.’

~That’s the ticket. Next time you wanna talk to me, do it just like that, okay? I’m not sure how you’d explain to anyone else why you’re talking to thin air. Also you might not wanna look over to your shoulder every time you think at me - someone’s gonna notice.~

He nods mutely, probably still in the middle of mentally processing the whole telepathic communication thing.

~Hey, speaking of someone noticing, you think anyone else can hear me?~

He shrugs and gives me the typical kid-like “iunno”, while he tries to hide the fact that his eyes are saying “god I hope not”.

~Better we find out now before I start telling you my _mysteeeerious ghost secrets._ Now, just get in the general area of somebody - I can’t actually move too far from you, it looks like.~

“Wait, you just said a minute ago that you weren’t a - mmgh.” Bit of an ingrained instinct to answer someone with your voice instead of your thoughts, huh? 

‘Fine. Whatever. We’re going downstairs.’ He makes for the staircase.

Despite myself, I get a little excited. I know next to nothing about Jaune’s family other than that his parents didn’t quite bow to the concept of _sexual restraint._ Seriously, seven children sounds like an absolute logistical nightmare. Also, there was that one sister that kept coming up in more recent fics - Saffron, I think? Wait, was it with a ‘ph’ or two f’s? Was she canon, or just -

And then I see Jaune’s mom cooking something over the stovetop and _sweet mercy you could grind concrete on those things._

She was, for the first half-second of my observation, unremarkable. Blond hair that went halfway down her back, white tank-top, tacky faded-blue jorts that you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing outdoors. Oh, and pasta primavera in the pan, by the looks of it.

But then my brain caught up with the fact that she had traps and lats like a _fucking demon_.

Her arms, too! With her back turned to us, she looks every bit the picture of a suburban soccer mom crossed with the muscle mass of three professional boxers. She looks like she could spank a _boulder_ until it cried!

And then my vision drifts downward and - huh. 

Her left leg is gone from the knee down, and replaced with a sleek white-and-gold prosthethic, Arc crest emblazoned proudly across the side of the shin.

Considering Jaune’s history and her injuries, I may as well be beaten over the head with the realization that Jaune’s mom is - or was - a Huntress. Still, to kill two birds with one stone -

~What the hell, Jaune?! Does your mom eat houses for a living?! She’s built like a _champion!_ ~ I roar at him.

No reaction from his mother, and we’re about ten paces away. Well, that answers that.

“Buh-pfft-” Jaune makes to splutter, before he claps a hand over his mouth and turns an angry glare over to me. ‘No! She’s an active Huntress, it’s just that Dad has more of the share of missions, especially with-’

~Yeah, I figured. Leg injury like that probably keeps her from extended missions.~

‘Er, I meant more along the lines of-’

“Jaune? You’re down early, I’m not finished with dinner.” Jaune’s mom interjects, unaware of our little byplay.

He snaps to attention.

“Y-Yeah Mom, just checking, is all.”

“I’ll be done in a bit, dear. Could you go check on Jade for me? Gods know if I leave her alone for too long she’ll try to apply her own ointment, the stubborn girl.”

Jaune’s expression softens in a way I can only describe as ‘familial exasperation’. “Sure, I’ll get right on it. I’ll yell at her for you if she’s already started.”

“That’s my boy. I’ll put some extra fried eggplant on your plate when you’re done.”

“Thanks, mom!” Jaune calls back, as he turns and jogs back up the stairs.

~Good thing she didn’t hear you cuss earlier. I’m starting to believe you weren’t exaggerating about the Fire Dust thing.~ I can’t help but interject.

‘Oh shut up, you. You don’t know what it’s like to taste the colours of the rainbow and _all of them are burning,_ ’ Jaune gripes.

Whoa, what? ~Wait, does she really-~

‘Gods no! It’s just a joke name for a brand of really strong antibacterial soap. It had this reputation like twenty years ago on the RemNet for tasting like fiery death, so a bunch of parents started using it for, uh, discipline purposes. It’s not poisonous, just...’ 

He shudders, making an audible _hoooechk_ noise as he does.

‘Really, really awful.’

Eesh. Now I’m glad my parents really didn’t give two hoots about me swearing when I was growing up. 

Jaune takes my silence as an opportunity to open the door to his sister’s room, and -

Oh.

Is this ‘unexpected reveal’ shtick going to be a regular thing? Because I’m starting to notice a very… physical trend.

Physical, in the sense that the first thing I notice are the burn scars.

Jade Arc is a remarkably tall woman, if her toes poking out from underneath her blanket is any clue. Lithe build, too, the kind you see in sprinters or swimmers. She currently has two fingers rooting around in a small white container. This is about as much as I can glean, considering I am currently having a hard time tearing my eyes away from the huge stretch of damaged skin over every visible inch of the left half of her upper body, Katawa Shoujo style.

Every once in a while, I spot a thin, shiny film of _something_ coalescing over a small patch of burnt flesh, before silently fading away.

Shot in the dark: I guess that’s what aura looks like when it’s healing something big.

No points for guessing what her occupation might be.

Jaune sighs. “Jade.”

“You’re not stopping me.”

“ _Jade._ ”

“No.”

With a shockingly practiced ease, Jaune pulls up his sleeve, rams his finger up her - thankfully uninjured - nose, and starts twirling it around. “Hand it over, Jade! You always skimp on the stuff!”

Jade wrenches up in a hefty snort-cough-gasp, before trying to smack the container in her hand across Jaune’s head. 

“Nyooooo! It smells like ass and it stings like hell!” the woman whines like a six-year-old. Granted, she did have the excuse that the only other person in the room was acting like a five-year-old, what with the impromptu ‘treasure hunt’ Jaune was subjecting her to. They spend the next minute or so swatting each other and squabbling like angry seagulls.

Ah, siblings. 

She doesn’t _really_ put up much of a fight, though, considering she was most likely a Huntress like her mother and was probably still capable of putting Jaune headfirst through a wall with her good arm. Jaune snags the container from her hand easily enough, before pulling up a chair.

Wordlessly, Jade undoes the clasps on her hospital gown-esque top, holding it against her chest as she uncovers the rest of the burn. I was certainly no stranger to serious injuries - pre-med and a childhood spent on the Internet saw to that - but I couldn’t suppress an inward grimace as I beheld the raw, red mess before me, interspersed with splotchy, paler spots upon which her aura was lazily flickering on and off. It takes a special kind of hardass to not feel anything from seeing that, and I’m not it. 

~If it’s not too intrusive a question to ask, how’d this happen?~

Jaune slows down in his application of the ointment, but keeps going as he answers. ‘Jade’s a Huntress too, and a lot of the newly-graduated folks from Haven get missions out in the hinterlands instead of at the borders. There was a Goliath stomping around a bunch of the frontier villages, and they wanted a team to put it down before it came around again with a herd.’

He grits his teeth a little.

‘Turns out, some idiot forgot to mention that the thing was old as hell, and that for some reason the stupid things learn how to breathe fire out of their trunks once they get old enough. Jade and her team barely managed to take it down before they all had to be airlifted to Vale for treatment.’

I’d never heard of a Goliath before, but from the description alone, the concept of _flamethrower elephants_ seems like it’d be right at home in this hellscape of a world.

~And ointment is enough? Doesn’t this kind of thing need a thorough dressing?~

‘For civvies, yeah. Aura works about the same though, so no one’s really worried about infection and stuff. The salve also has a bit of Aura booster in it, so it’s more than enough.’

Huh, now that’s a cool bit of lore. Now that I think about it, I wonder how far Remnant’s development of germ theory and antibiotics diverges from Earth’s. Aura and Semblances had to be one hell of a confounding factor, right?

Before I could ponder this further, Jaune thinks at me again.

‘You know, Jade and Mom aren’t even the only people with serious injuries in the family. Every Arc has at least one. _Every_ Arc. Dad got his kidney blown out by a gangster in Vacuo while he was still in training. Saphron used to be a combat medic before she took up mentoring, and she lost two of her fingers yanking apart a burning Bullhead to save a rookie team. Robin lost an eye to a Drillneck. Azure’s right arm’s been paralyzed for the last two years from an EOD incident. Eola and Eona both have those Dust-boosted spinal implants after the Bullhead crash that killed their mentor. Every Arc’s earned their battle-scars in the line of duty.’ He went silent at this, returning all of his attention to Jade and the burn salve.

It didn’t take a genius to see where his insecurities laid. 

…

…

I’m really going to do this, aren’t I?

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to say the right thing to him. Sure, he needs a hell of a talking-to, but this is uncharted territory for me. Am I even qualified to help? I’m no parent, and I’m certainly not much of a role model either. Am I going to be able to separate the character in my mind from the anxious kid in front of me? Will my biases fail Jaune before he’s even had the chance to properly fail on his own?

...Fine. Alright. Don’t psych yourself out. Just…

Here goes.

~Jaune, you mentioned something called the RemNet earlier. I’m guessing that’s, like, forums and sharing videos online?~

‘Yeah, basically. Why do you ask?’

~After you’re done with Jade’s ointment and dinner, would you mind looking up a couple things for me?~

_____________________________

An hour-and-a-half later, and here I am, staring at a translucent frameless computer screen, like something out of Deus Ex. Jaune is plopped down in his seat, swinging his legs and waiting for me to start. I can hear crickets outside of his window as the evening sets in.

Not as loud as my own self-doubt, but hey, what can you do. I can stamp it out for as long as I need to, if it means I can get through to Jaune. 

If it means I can make a Huntsman out of him, instead of an ill-equipped cheat. 

~Could you look up Pharos Academy for me? Try and find stuff about their enrolment and curriculum.~

Jaune grimaces a little, but complies. A page on the Academy’s procedure and expectations comes up, a PDF proudly emblazoned with the school’s logo of a terracotta-coloured lighthouse. Most of the info I’m looking for is there - eligibility starts at the age of eleven, program lasts roughly six years. Any applicants that either failed to get accepted, or are from a frontier town without formal schooling are allowed to reapply once a year, or in 6 months if you get a special dispensation from one of the relevant faculty members. The test itself would be harder, and accepted members would be expected to catch up with their peers in every matter except for Aura due to the obvious legality reasons, where they’d receive regular private tutoring to get them up to speed.

~Bring up something about making preparations for primary combat school, including what people do to get ready for reapplication.~

If Jaune already knows what I was getting at with these searches, he doesn’t mention it out loud. A couple of new pages are up, now - first, a list of the textbooks commonly used in Pharos, though the most recent list is a couple years out of date. Guess textbook scalpers exist no matter which universe you’re in, huh? Eh, RWBYverse probably has its own pirating sites, if it really comes down to that. It also looks like there are training facilities that work similar to membership-based gyms, mentor services for promising trainees, and a couple of Pharos’s own training zones are actually free for use by non-students, so long as they had express permission. There’s even a little footnote here that encourages hopefuls to interact with already established students, as both an exercise in camaraderie and an opportunity to learn from your peers.

~Jaune.~

He’s silent. He’s barely looking at the screen.

~Do you want to be a Huntsman?~

“More than anything.” He speaks, rather than thinks, without missing a beat.

~ _Then why aren’t you training?_ ~

He retreats back into his ashamed silence.

~You’ve just seen the same information that I have. Procedures, textbooks, training facilities, alternative options. There are opportunities out there for you to still become a huntsman.~ 

I keep my voice calm and civil. I don’t intend to nag him; I just need him to understand his inaction.

~How long has it been since your first attempt at Pharos?~

“Ten months.” He’s quieter now, but his voice carries just fine in his silent room. 

~Two months until the next application cycle, and you and I both know that that’s not enough time. If you truly want to be a Huntsman, you _need_ to train. No waiting for your parents’ permission, no procrastination, no hesitation. You can have all the resources in the world, but you need to _use them_ , Jaune. The only person in the world that can make you a Huntsman is you.~

“I know,” His voice is barely a whisper now. “I know.”

~Jaune. Why do you want to be a Huntsman?~

He pulls his legs up onto the chair and hides his face. I can tell he’s biting his lip, because he hasn’t fully turned away from me yet.

~Take your time, big guy. I’m right here. I won’t judge.~

The next few minutes pass by without a word. The crickets have stopped chirping. The whirr-hum of the computer is constant and cloying in a way that’s not quite comforting, but not quite suffocating either.

Finally, Jaune speaks.

“I’m scared.”

…

“I’m scared I’ll never be happy unless I’m an Arc.”

It’s clear he doesn’t mean that in the literal sense. ~What does being an Arc mean to you?~

“...Every Arc since great-great-grandpa Julius has either been a Huntsman, or worked so closely with them that there’s no serious difference. Every Arc’s fought Grimm. Every Arc’s fought bandits or terrorists. Every Arc’s saved somebody.”

He curls up even further into himself. His hands tighten so hard I’m a little scared he’s going to break skin. He bites harder.

“Every Arc’s been a hero. _Talented_ heroes, even from when they were just starting out. Azure and Robin graduated near the top of their class, along with their teams. Eola and Eona had mentors tripping over themselves trying to recruit them. Mom beat the hell out of a Mistrali crime syndicate fifteen years back, or so I’m told, and they’re still scared of her. Dad’s been a Huntsman for thirty years and he _still_ gets thank-you letters in the mail. Saphron got a PhD for her thesis on combat rescue procedures by submitting two-hundred hours of _her own live crisis footage._

“All of them got hurt, too. I remember when the twins lost Mrs. Vayu, their mentor, to the Griffon attack on their Bullhead. They fought with _damaged spines_ , they were barely holding their bones together with aura! I asked them in the hospital, and I asked Mom, and Dad, and all my other sisters if that’s what being a hero is like, and if they thought it was worth it, and all they said was “It’s different for everyone, you’ll understand when you get there.” I don’t-!”

Jaune can’t hold it in. He starts crying.

“I don’t understand! I _can’t_ understand! All I have are stories from people I’ve never met, and hospital notices that we get in the mail! They wouldn’t even tell me what they went through when I asked them to their f-fucking faces! I don’t _know!_

“All I know is that _Arc means hero_ , and it’s not enough for me! What happens if I become a Huntsman and it’s all for nothing?! What if I find out it’s not worth it?! I don’t _know_ what being a hero is like and I’m _scared_ of it! I don’t want to regret being a hero, and I don’t want to regret being an Arc!

“B-But fat chance of that happening, right? I’m clumsy, I’m slow, and I don’t learn as fast as a lot of other people. Gods, just look at me - I’m scared of what it means to be an Arc, but I’m scared of what it means if I’m _not_ . What if I’m _never_ a hero? What if I’m _never_ an Arc? What if that means I’ll never be happy?”

Jaune slumps, and I can only call him _absolutely spent._

“I don’t know if I’ll be happy just being me, or if I’ll be happy being an Arc, and it just… paralyzes me. Every time I think of it, I just get locked up in this - this loop of second-guessing myself. I don’t know what I want, and I hate it. I _hate_ myself.”

He finally goes silent. His nose is dripping all over his jeans, and his eyes are red-rimmed and streaked with dried tears.

I…

I didn’t expect that much. Not in the slightest.

But I helped open him up in the first place, and I wasn’t about to bail on him now.

~Jaune… would you like to hear my answers? I understand if you don’t want to right now, though.~

A sniffle, followed by a muted “okay”.

~Sure thing, big guy. Right now, it looks to me like you need a different definition of a hero, and I’m going to help you with that. Is that alright?~

I get a silent nod, but he keeps his head nestled in his arms.

~Now, I want you to think about a hero, but _not_ an Arc. Can you do that for me?~

He lifts his head, expression still despondent, but he manages another nod.

~Atta boy. Now, if your hero was perfect, at least in your eyes, what would they do?~

A vague question, to be sure, but it doesn’t look like it deters Jaune. He scrunches up his nose a bit as he thinks, shifting in his chair.

“They fight - no, wait… they save - no, that’s not right, either…”

He grumbles as he discards answers, mumbling half-phrases under his breath - “no, that doesn’t even make _sense_ ” - for a solid minute, until his eyes brighten. He looks to me, and says -

“The perfect hero makes you feel safe enough to be brave yourself.”

Now _there’s_ an interesting answer. ~Go on.~

“...A Huntsman fights Grimm, and a Huntsman fights people, but just because you have aura and a weapon doesn’t make you a hero, right? A huntsman sees a problem and fixes it. A hero, I guess, sees that someone doesn’t feel safe and does whatever they can to make sure that that person feels safe again.”

He gets up out of his chair, re-energized in a way that would have left me doubting that he’d ever cried if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

“A-And a perfect hero is even more than that, because a perfect hero _inspires!_ A perfect hero makes people think that, no matter where they are, the fact that a perfect hero exists is enough to make them feel a little safer in this world. And when people feel safe…” His eyes are positively _twinkling_ now, “They can afford to feel _brave_. And a brave person can help others, in their own way! And maybe, maybe they’ll spread that bravery! It’d be good to feel that way against the Grimm, and it’d be good to feel that way anywhere else, too!

“Yeah, that’s it! A perfect hero doesn’t only kill Grimm, doesn’t only take down criminals, doesn’t only save people, doesn’t only sacrifice their body for others - they _give!_ They bring safety, and they give bravery!”

God, if I had a mouth, I would be grinning like an absolute fucking goblin.

~Jaune, that is a _wonderful_ idea. I love it!~

He grins, too, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t pulling off one hell of a goblin-grin himself.

“Oh my gods, was it - was it really that easy? _That’s_ what I was worried about all this time?” He can’t stop smiling, even as he’s saying that.

~That was it the whole time, Jaune. The reason your family can’t tell you what being a hero is like or if it’s worth it is because they _couldn’t_. The definition of a hero isn’t an Arc, or a specific person, or anything concrete like that. That answer can only come from you, and what you feel is right. Do you see now?~

“Y-Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense now. It just… it feels _right._ ”

~Will you pursue it?~

Jaune stumbles a bit at that. “Uh-what?”

~Why don’t you make that your reason to be a Huntsman? Not to be an Arc, not even for the sake of being a Huntsman itself - why not try and be a perfect hero for somebody, anybody?~

“Um… oh. Do you - d’you think I can do it?”

~Hey, _you_ were the one who said all that first. ‘No matter where you are, it’s enough that you exist’? That’s all the proof I’d ever need, if you ask me.~

Jaune’s hand comes up to his forehead, and he gasps a clearly overdramatic “ah!”, like a Victorian lady with the vapours. “For it is by our own hands that we elevate others to heroism! Through our presence, the seeds of bravery may be sown upon this world!” He shoots an impish grin at me. “Like it?”

~Hah! A cheesy aura unlocking chant? I didn’t take you for the theatrical type!~

I _totally_ took him for the theatrical type.

“I know, right?! I remember when I was little and the twins got their aura unlocked, and _oh my god_ they looked like they wanted to sink into the floor and die! Dad did it in front of the whole family and he made the chant last, like, two minutes! I must have heard the line ‘Infinite in distance and unbound by death’ like five times!”

~Ooh, ooh!~ I put on my ‘pompous medieval bigwig’ voice. ~‘I release your soul, and by my own spirit, exalt thee!’~

“ _Exalt!_ Like those crappy Great War dramas Mom watches!”

We laugh long and hard together, a hugely welcome change from the deeply personal subject matter from before. 

_Wow_ , that was liberating. To think it’s been less than six hours and Jaune’s already found direction in his life! I did it! I’m helping, and _not_ fucking it up for everybody! Is there a leaderboard for this kinda thing? There better be a leader-

A flash of light interrupts me.

A flash of light from a wide-eyed _Jaune._

~Wha-Jaune, what in the hell was that?~

In lieu of an answer, he wordlessly crumples to the floor.

…

…

What?

WHAT IN THE FUCK?!

~JAUNE!~

Why, _why_ do I keep opening my goddamn mouth?!

~Jaune, come on, this isn’t fucking funny -- WAKE UP!~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a late upload. Trying to get all of this straight was pretty goddamn hard, seeing as I'm still pretty new to writing.
> 
> Honestly, considering the reception so far, I should have bundled this together with chapter one from the get-go. Ah well, you live and you learn. Hopefully this gives people an idea of where I want to go with this - making Jaune an actual character instead of a harem maypole, for one.


	3. Chapter 3: Everything Has Its Price

I apologize to every panicking bystander I’ve ever seen on YouTube; I’ve learned that it’s one thing to see a child drop like a rock in front of you, and it’s quite another to gather yourself enough to do something about it while your thought process reads something like _OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK._  
  
~Come on, Jauney boy, don’t you crap out on me yet! Eyes open, deep breaths, how many fingers do you - right, _fuck!_ ~  
  
What the hell am I supposed to do?! There’s no guarantee I’d be able to make him lucid enough to get out into the hallway, much less signal for help. I can’t do CPR due to the whole physically-challenged garbage. I’m not even sure if Remnant biology is different from Earth biology in any significant way and I’m just barking up the wrong damn -  
  
A wet, sucking _heave_ erupts from Jaune’s mouth, as his eyelids burst wide open.  
  
 _Oh sweet honey mustard Jesus I almost had a heart attack._  
  
~JAUNE! What the hell!~ I said by way of a ‘welcome back’.  
  
He responded by curling up on his side with a series of hacking coughs, wheezing, a little bit of “ow my everything”, followed by more coughing.  
  
~Kid, I’d bet hard cash on that being your Aura activating. The hell do you mean, ‘ow my everything’?~  
  
Jaune had enough wherewithal scrounged up now to shoot me a wordless, dirty glare.  
  
~Don't you backsass me, boy. Seriously, though, is everything alright? Nothing injured? No bleeding?~  
  
A couple more coughs, and Jaune manages to prop himself up into a mostly-upright sitting position. He still looks like he took a boot to the chest, unfortunately, and his breathing still sounds a little shallow and laboured.  
  
"Ugh, I - *koff* - I think I'm okay. Wow that - *koff hack* - god my mouth tastes like _ashes._ "  
  
~Least it doesn't look like you're hurt, for now. What _happened_ , big guy? All I saw was you flash like a camera and down you went. I mean obviously it was your Aura, but I've never heard of someone just conking out after getting it.~  
  
"Me neither. I mean sure, I've only seen it either on video or on Eola and Eona the one time I told you about, but they looked totally fine afterwards. Better, even."  
  
He grimaces, while clutching a hand over his stomach.  
  
"We were just laughing and stuff, and then it felt like someone replaced my organs with _actual fire_. I… I really wasn't ready for that. Seriously, I don't think Aura activation is supposed to work like that."  
  
Neither do I, but today had already seen fit to bash me over the head with the whole spooky-ghost-except-maybe-not bullshit I currently had going on, so maybe I'm a bit inured to paradigm shifts for a while. Still, that isn't a reason to not be careful. If canon is any indication, then I know that making flippant assumptions is a wonderful way to kick off a cascade of mistakes you can't take back.  
  
Looking at you, Ironwood.  
  
~Get back on your computer, Jaune, we're gonna look up some stuff.~  
  
" _Now?"_ He gawks, shooting a glance at his bedside clock. "It's midnight. I have school tomorrow!"  
  
~And you suffered a fainting spell because we said an aura unlocking chant as a joke. Seriously, we even interrupted the stupid thing like three times.~  
  
“Oh come on, I’m fi-”  
  
~Computer. Now. We're not taking chances for later.~  
  
"Bwugh. _Fiiiine._ "  
  
Jaune parked his ass back onto his chair, and it was off to the races again.  
  
Searching for appropriate Aura activation procedures comes with the unsurprising disclaimer roadblock that makes us confirm that we were only looking at the information for academic purposes and not to break the law. Bit late for that, sadly. According to the documentation, everyone with Aura has an instinctual knowledge of their own 'activation mantra', but there exists no hard and fast restrictions, meaning that any sufficiently long mnemonic phrase used to focus the mind would technically work. Weirdly enough, the more the phrase deviates from their 'default', the more focus and Aura is required of the activator, sometimes even fizzling out entirely, necessitating a retry. Intent to unlock is also stated as a mandatory condition, and there are no listed side effects aside from minor fatigue on the activator's part.  
  
Interesting info, sure, but supremely unhelpful considering that intent was absent and the chant itself was a meme-tier hackjob.  
  
Our second and last search is if it was possible to activate your Aura yourself, either by life-threatening danger or through sheer force of will, which leads us to…  
  
A Mistralian animation forum?  
  
It takes a total of three whole seconds before the side banner on the webpage registers through whatever subconscious mental block I must have put up because _oh god RWBYverse has anime._  
  
God help us all, even though fanon assures me that this world's gods have fucked off ages ago. Or maybe it's canon. This is what I get for not keeping up with the source material, isn't it? It's almost poetic justice that I find myself on a goddamn _anime forum_ after the fact, as if to rub it all in.  
  
I desperately try to ignore the sudden twinkle in Jaune's eyes.  
  
Reading further, the responses to several of these threads basically boil down to "no you fucking idiot" and "go back to your Kuo Kuanese cartoons."  
  
Ahh. It's just like back home.  
  
This time on an _actual website_ instead of a den of depravity, information on self-unlocking comes with _zero_ legal disclaimers, surprisingly enough, but we find out that this is because there’s, uh, _zero laws around it._ Cases from the Four Kingdoms are either discovered to be fake or kept under lock and key by local governments for research purposes, so there’s no actual established laws around it.  
  
Going by the info on this dinky little footnote of a government website, self-unlocking is considered to be prodigiously rare… and is pretty much completely undocumented since the advent of Remnant's modern medical field. This is because self-unlocked people presumably either die anyways to the situation that prompted it in the first place, or just don't self-report to a medical research facility, especially frontier-folk with no easy access to facilities like that. The only existing public records are from before the Great War, and are implicitly distrusted due to their dubious origin and verifiability.  
  
Dammit. So close.  
  
We've learned a little interesting trivia overall, but dick bupkis about anything concerning Jaune's little episode. The only real recourse left, I'd say, is to get Jaune to talk to his parents about it. Yes, that would most likely involve outing me, but I'm not much for the isekai-masquerade bullshit and I'd really rather not potentially risk Jaune's life over it. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.  
  
~I'm stumped. Tell your parents tomorrow that you unlocked your aura - maybe the fainting is some ancient Arc legacy or something.~  
  
He gives me a disbelieving look. 'Like, the truth? How am I even supposed to explain you? _You_ didn't even explain yourself.' He's switched back to thinking his words, now, and I can only imagine it's because we're done with the emotional stuff.  
  
~Because I still don't really have a full picture of what I am. All I know is that I used to be alive, now I'm not, I know bits and pieces of a future, and I'm glued to your soul and I don't know why.~  
  
'Alright _hold up,_ ' he backpedals on my obvious cue, wide-eyed. 'Did you just say you could see the future?'  
  
~ _A_ future, not _the_ future. I literally do not exist in the future I’ve seen, so me being here at all has technically changed things. Maybe. The beginning of what I know we can do something about starts five years from now, and anything before that is liable to put you in a jail cell or a coffin in about thirty seconds flat.~  
  
I’m not sure if the whole Amber situation has already come to pass, but if it hasn’t and if Jaune ever comes across it, he, and by extension me, are both turbo-dead. We’re not going to get within a hundred feet of that deathtrap, if we can help it.  
  
~I only know up to a certain point, past which I can’t really confirm much, but even that much is going to take a hell of a long time to explain.~  
  
'Was… was that why we had this talk about the whole Huntsman and hero thing? Because you already saw me from your future vision? You already knew I wasn’t training?'  
  
~Partly because of that, yeah. Other part's because I think you're a good kid at heart that needs a helping hand.~  
  
'Did I become a Huntsman in the future, too?'  
  
I know my response will sting, but I'm not about to lie to the kid, not about something that affects him this personally. ~Yeah, you did. Not the legit way, though.~  
  
He flinched, hard. 'I _cheated_?'  
  
~You sent forged transcripts into Beacon. Turned out okay, in the end, but you didn't have a very easy time of it.~  
  
'…Oh.'  
  
~Jaune, you and I both know that you'd never consider something like that now, not after the talk we had. Don't beat yourself up over it.~  
  
'Yeah, but… but if you weren't here, I would have. How am I supposed to be a hero if I'm not even a good person yet?'  
  
~No one in the world starts off as a good person, Jaune. It takes plenty of effort and mistakes to get there.~  
  
He raises an eyebrow at this, slightly confused. 'I thought the old saying was that everyone was born good.'  
  
~Everyone is born _innocent_ , not good. Innocent just means your goodness hasn't been tested yet. Alternate-future Jaune made mistakes, you've made yours, and I can guarantee you that the both of us are going to make mistakes of our own. What matters is that you keep trying to be a good person despite all of that. I'll be there to help you, and you can make sure I don't go _too_ crazy, heh.~  
  
'You mean it?' He says it so damn easily, so trustingly, that I can't help but feel a little warm inside.  
  
~Every step of the way, big guy. Now, you should get to bed, it's almost one o'clock.~  
  
“‘Kay. G'night."  
  
And tonight finally comes to a close. Though now I wonder, how do I deal with sleep, or boredom, considering the whole -  
  
'Now that I think about it, though, this sounds an awful lot like the plot of that one anime where -'  
  
Oh good lord I refuse to deal with this tonight. ~Good night, Jaune.~  
  
'But it's _good_! It's about-"  
  
~Good _night,_ Jaune!~

* * *

  
  
As it turns out, I didn’t have to float around for the rest of the night and stare at a wall until I was bored to tears - an actual perk, for once, of my new incorporeal self was that I could bypass the passage of time by straight-up refusing to acknowledge it. All I had to do that night was to space out until I caught the noise of Jaune waking up.  
  
With a jaw-cracking yawn, he uncurls himself from the ball of pillows and sheets he’s concocted atop his bed.  
  
‘Oh hey, you’re not a fever dream. Good morning… uh… _you._ ’  
  
Shit, I knew I was forgetting something. I haven’t even told him my name yet!  
  
~Oh, my bad. Guess I never got around to it, huh? My name’s-~  
  
...wait.  
  
Hold on, _what_?  
  
~...uh...it’s…~  
  
How do you even - _how?!_  
  
Why the hell can’t I remember my own name?!  
  
~...I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think I forgot.~  
  
Jaune looks like it’s way too early in the morning for this shit, and I’m very much inclined to agree. ‘You… forgot your name. Your _name._ It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, just-’  
  
~Dude, it’s just a name, I’d be happy to tell you it if I could just _remember_ the damn thing!~  
  
I try to sift through my memories of my family, my friends, anybody that could have conceivably said my name at some point.  
  
I remember my dad talking to me about the geopolitics of Sri Lanka. When he opens his mouth to say my name… I hear nothing.  
  
I remember my mom spreading burn cream on my hand as a kid because I thought it was a splendid idea to grab a lit lightbulb. She tries to comfort me as I cry, and I hear everything, except for my name.  
  
I remember the many times I went to karaoke with my friends, and the one time I tried that famous section from Dream On. I remember them laughing, calling me a dumbass, and going to get some water for me.  
  
Not once do I hear my name.  
  
It’s not so much upsetting as it is _deeply unsettling._ Whatever turbo-body-dysmorphia that may have resulted because of my unsanctioned loss of physicality was booted out of my system soon after, and I felt every second of disorientation that resulted from it, but on the other hand, I don’t have any concrete feelings to refer to when I consider that my name is effectively _gone_.  
  
Just the strange, cloying sense of unease that comes with realizing my memories have been messed with.  
  
I try to stomp down on that sickening feeling, at least for now. No point worrying about something I can’t change for now.  
  
~No dice. I’ve tried what I could, but I’ve got nothing to show for it. I mean, I guess you could call me whatever you want.~  
  
Jaune doesn’t respond immediately, hand propped up under his chin in thought. ‘You know, you could just name yourself. I mean it’s _yourself_ we’re talking about; I guess that counts as dibs or something.’  
  
Eh. Good a reason as any. At least I know what name to pick that I won’t forget to respond to if I’m called by it.  
  
~Sure. I think I’ll go by ‘Cryo.’~  
  
‘That a forum handle or something?’ Bah, leave it to the kid familiar with anime boards to suss me out. ‘Hey, I’m not knocking it, it sounds fine.’  
  
~Yeah, yeah, whatever. Cryo the spooky future ghost, at your service.~  
  
‘Jaune Arc the not-so-spooky hero in training, and I’m glad you’re here.’  
  
I can’t help but grin inwardly at that.  
  
~Here’s hoping you keep your optimism after I’ve roped you into training from hell for the next five years.~  
  
‘I am… _way_ more paranoid about this partnership now.’  
  
~No take-backs.~  
  
‘Dammit.’

* * *

  
  
Jaune heads down for breakfast, now fully resolved to come clean about his motivations, his aura, and the dead guy on his shoulder. It would be a bit of an injustice, however, to contextualize this purely in the frame of how much it subverts canon. At the core of it all is just a kid - not a hero, not a Huntsman - a twelve-year-old boy who’d found direction in his life. You don’t need grand revelations or writs of fate to change your course in life, not when the personal moments can mean just as much to a person.  
  
I can tell Jaune feels a similar way, too, because that kind of inner confidence is hard to disguise if you know what you’re looking for. The gaze doesn’t wander, the back is straighter, there’s a little bit of this _drive_ in his step that you wouldn’t notice unless you’d seen him before the fact.  
  
It was oddly poignant, in a way.  
  
A shame it lasts all of two seconds as Jaune’s mom sees him enter the dining room and _whoa shit_ _she’s fast!_  
  
“My baby boy!” She crosses the floor in about two steps before sweeping Jaune up into the kind of hug you use to suplex a grizzly bear. Or an Ursa. “My wonderful little hero!” She then starts showering him with kisses.  
  
Jaune does his best impression of a cat with a shot of air freshener up its nose, what with all the spluttering, whining, and the desperate bid to escape. But as expected, there’s no getting away from Arc-momma, not while she’s gushing about her ‘sweet little pumpkin pie’ who looks like he’s turning a little blue in the face.  
  
Jade’s the only other person at the table, and the expression on her face is… well, it’s certainly something. I can only describe it as a strange undercurrent of sadness that shows in her eyes, coupled with a shit-eatingly proud grin that’s so wide she’s pushing aura into the injured side of her mouth to keep it up.  
  
Before I get to ask Jaune if this kind of thing is the Arc family breakfast routine or something, his mom finally releases her death-hug, letting Jaune slink back onto the floor like a concussed sparrow. He’s barely shaken off the oxygen deprivation before she grabs him by the shoulders again.  
  
“Baby, I have _so much_ to say to you, but we need to wait until your father’s back from the Bullhead hangar with the twins. For now, though, you’re getting an extra-special breakfast, young man! All the Argus premium bacon your heart desires!”  
  
“ _Bacon,_ ” Jaune practically goes into a trance at the mere words, eyes locking onto his plate, piled so high with sizzling-hot meaty goodness that his knees nearly buckle at the sight of it. I don’t blame him, seeing as I’m pretty sure I’m about to shed a tear myself.  
  
~There’s… *sniff*... there’s just so much beauty in this world, you know?~ Sure, I can’t actually cry anymore, but faced with the splendor before me, sobbing might as well be proper grammar. It’s only appropriate that I play it up.  
  
Jaune snaps out of it earlier than I do. “I-It’s great, but what’s the occasion?”  
  
“Celebrating your aura being unlocked, of course! I know you were old enough to remember the twins and their own aura-unlocking day.”  
  
“Well yeah, I even remember the-” Jaune freezes, just as I do, because - “Wait, _how_ do you know that, exactly?”  
  
Jade raises her uninjured hand, still holding her fork. “That was me. You know you said all that stuff out loud last night, right? You keep forgetting my room’s literally right next to yours.” Her grin’s morphed from proud to smug, leering at Jaune like the cat that caught the canary. Still, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.  
  
If she heard the _whole_ rant last night… then considering how Jaune talked about feeling paralyzed because he didn’t have a good read on what it meant to be a hero, it’s only natural that she’d feel guilty for that. It wasn’t her fault, of course - I’d already cleared that up with Jaune - but I wasn’t dumb enough to forget that a person can still feel guilty for something that they share no blame for.  
  
~On one hand, you were overheard. On the other, free bacon _because_ you were overheard. Funny how that works out, huh?~ I can’t help but share my piece.  
  
‘Still going to have to explain who you are, though. At least I can do it on a stomach full of bacon, I guess?’ Jaune thinks at me, tense grimace never leaving his face.  
  
~That’s the spirit.~  
  
“Mom, did Jade tell you about, uh, everything I said?”  
  
This, at last, seems to sap a bit of her good cheer.  
  
“I know we should wait until Orion and the twins are back, but… I’m _sorry,_ baby.” She wraps him up in a much gentler hug, stroking his hair with one hand. “I know why I said what I did, but I still hurt you with it. I shouldn’t have let you flounder for so long. I should have noticed.”  
  
Jaune sighs, leaning into his mother’s shoulder. “Mom, it’s not your fault. I figured it out in the end, right? It’s not like you coulda just given me the answer or something. Everyone else had to come up with their own answer, too.”  
  
“Honey, you were _scared._ I know everyone else had to go through it, but I didn’t notice how hard a time you were having for so long. I should have helped, and I didn’t.” She snuggles deeper into the hug. “I’m so sorry, Jaune.”  
  
“...It’s okay, Mom. I don’t blame you, or anyone,” Jaune mumbles, a little blindsided by his mother’s frankness. “Besides, I got help of my own, I guess.”  
  
“Oh, Jade told me about that. Was it a friend from school, or-”  
  
 **WHAM-WHAM.** I hear the front door slam open and impact the wall, followed by -  
  
“HOLY FUCK JAUNE, YOU SELF-ACTIVATED?!” I hear two female voices shout from down the hall.  
  
Ah. Those must be the twins, Eola and Eona.  
  
With a sound a bit like water in a searing frypan, one of the twins literally _flashes_ into existence by the kitchen doorway in a burst of light.  
  
“Eola!” Mother dearest chides. “No semblances in the house!”  
  
Without missing a beat, the other twin catapults out of Eola’s shadow with a wet _bloop_ , landing on her feet with an eager expression on her face.  
  
They're identical twins, both with silvery-blond bobcuts, short statures, and fuckoff-huge weapons strapped to their backs. Eola has what looks like a morningstar with the spikes retracted, and a breach-loading mechanism near the base of the handle that looks like it's meant to fire small cannonballs instead of bullets. Eona has a gnarly-looking spear that I can tell would have tickled the ceiling if it wasn't clearly folded up on itself. No gun mechanism, so far as I can tell, but when you can use any shadow as an impromptu 'nothing personal, kid' moment, then range isn't really a concern, I suppose.  
  
“Eona, I _know_ you heard me from the hallway and did that anyways!”  
  
“Mom, you really expect us to be calm?!” Eola exclaims, with a doofus grin plastered across her face. “You literally told us that Jaune activated his aura in the middle of the night by _talking about being a hero!_ He’s basically a shitty anime character now!”  
  
Oh, if only you knew.  
  
“No swearing in the house, or it’s twenty rounds with me.” Jaune’s mom seems like she’s finally lost her patience, crossing her arms while flexing her silvery-white aura - and her goddamn demon muscles - for effect.  
  
Eola clams up, pantomiming a zipper across her lips. “I’ll be good.”  
  
"You'd best. Now, did Orion come with you or did you leave him behind like last time?"  
  
"I'm here, Lucia,” a deeper voice calls from the doorway. “Gods, when did I lose that pep in my step?” A weary-eyed man steps into the kitchen.  
  
I’m willing to admit that I’d had a bit of a preconception in mind, concerning Orion Arc’s appearance. Considering his wife - he said Lucia, right? - was very muscular but still surprisingly lithe, I might have come to expect a stereotypical 400-pound beef titan. What I get in front of me, instead, is still a demonstrably fit man, but with a build much more comparable to a triathlon athlete instead of a fighter.  
  
He’s also absolutely _painted_ with scars.  
  
Seriously, they’re almost everywhere. One across his temple, one on the side of his upper lip, two across his hairline, and just an absolute latticework of much fainter lines trailing down his arms and hands. His weapons are also suitably hardcore - motherfucking _javelin cannons_ strapped to both of his bare arms, with what looks like two separate halves of a tower shield balanced atop each one. The edges of the shield halves are sharpened, and I spot rail guides under each of them - wait, they’re arm-mounted _dual greatswords_ too?!  
  
Forget the beef titan thing, this dude’s a badass!  
  
“It’s not you, it’s them. I swear, I fed them normal food, how did they get so hyperactive?” Lucia huffed to herself.  
  
Orion turns his attention to Jaune, and laughs heartily as he brings his hand down to ruffle Jaune’s hair. The sheer weight of the weaponry makes him stumble under the sudden force of it, a panicked “Bwagh!” escaping him as he tries not to fall on his ass.  
  
“So, kiddo, how does it feel to be a statistical impossibility?”  
  
“What do you - oh! The Aura! No, there’s a bit of a story behind that.”  
  
“Let’s hear it, then.” Well damn, dude knows how to cut straight to the point. No awkward apologies that didn’t really need to be said, just instantly asking the big question. He’d be quite the refreshing main character in a TV show, so long as you were willing to let it end in 6 episodes due to the sheer lack of narrative downtime.  
  
Orion shucks his weapons, depositing them beside the table before he sits down, fixing Jaune with an expectant look.  
  
“So… uh… there’s no way to say this without sounding crazy, so I’m just going to spit it out.” Jaune takes a deep, deep breath. “I started hearing voices yesterday. Well, _one_ voice. He’s a bit of a jackass.”  
  
Hey, I take exception to that! I’m perfectly amenable, at least when I’m not cussing like a sailor or making tasteless jokes!

* * *

  
  
Eventually, Jaune finishes his story, and I can only label the general sentiment in the room as _hopelessly confused._  
  
“Jaune, you know I was kidding when I called you an anime character, right?” Eola moans, with a hand to her forehead. “You weren’t supposed to take it seriously.”  
  
“Oh shut up, like I chose for this to happen to me!” He whines back.  
  
“Are you _sure_ you’re okay, Jaune? I’ve been part of this lifestyle for a very long time and this is… the first time I’ve heard of anyone passing out twenty seconds after their activation,” Orion implores, all humour gone from his face. “I’ve seen activators passing out if they spent themselves dry, but never recipients. _Never_ have I heard of someone feeling pain because of it.”  
  
“Dad, I get you’re worried, but you’ve asked that three times now. I feel _fine_. Cryo made me research it last night, just to make sure.”  
  
“About that…” Eona pipes up. “We’re just going to assume it’s not someone with a semblance just whispering in your ear or something? Maybe he wants you to be strong so that he can recruit you for something, since you already have his trust.”  
  
Hey, it’s a fair question, and one I have no way of proving it one way or the other, not without taking a very serious gamble.  
  
On the other hand… honesty is the best pesticide.  
  
~Jaune, can you tell everyone except your mom and dad to leave the room? I don’t think the others should hear this.~  
  
‘Future secrets?’  
  
~Future secrets. Not the nice kind, either.~  
  
Jaune says it, and after a bit of whining and grumbling, Jade, Eola and Eona leave the room, breakfasts in hand.  
  
Time for the scary part.  
  
~Now, a lot of what I’m going to say will sound ridiculous, but your parents might get it, and that’s what I’m gonna gamble on. I’ll explain it in detail while you’re in school today. Now, say out loud that Ozpin is a jackass chessmaster who’s trying to kill the Queen of the Grimm by throwing kids at her instead of fortifying the nations from a community-oriented standpoint, and that if Eona ever compares me again to the guy that got Summer Rose killed because he can’t fathom overhauling his method of approach, then we’re going to have some real goddamn problems.~  
  
To his credit, Jaune doesn’t outwardly express his diminishing trust in my sanity.  
  
He sure as hell expresses it inwardly, though. I didn’t even know it was possible to make thoughts that loud.  
  
Jaune eventually does take a deep breath, and he drops my info bomb.  
  
Orion and Lucia _freeze_.  
  
Alright, I’m in the money. Time for the _really_ scary part.  
  
“ _How_ do you know any of that?” Lucia starts, after a stone-cold silence. She asks it like a question, but the complete lack of inflection in her voice makes it sound like an order.  
  
She speaks, and I answer.  
  
Jaune relays my defense. “He said he’s seen major events of the future, so he knows that Ozpin’s gameplan doesn’t work, and that it results in a lot of people dying in Vale.”  
  
“Hm, then we’re lucky we bowed out of that side of the business a decade ago. Never could stand that smug old coffee addict, even on a good day. I don’t know how Glynda manages it.”  
  
Whoa, surprise lore! Makes sense, too - Ozpin would have less of a political hold on an old-blood family of Huntsmen, making it much easier for them to leave his service whenever they wished.  
  
Lucia continues. “But that still doesn’t explain Cryo’s motivations. What if he’s on Salem’s side?”  
  
“He says that if I die, then he most likely dies for real as well. Also, uh, he says just because he distrusts Ozpin, doesn’t mean that he automatically bats for the other team. He wants me to become my own affiliation - wait, really? That sounds a little over-the-top.”  
  
“And how would you go about accomplishing that?” Orion interjects. “If you just mean getting as strong as possible, then it’s not as easy as it sounds. Something like that comes with… moral sacrifices.”  
  
God, he could just say Raven, you know. No point pussyfooting around it.  
  
“Cryo says he, uh, ‘takes extreme umbrage’ with you comparing him to Raven Branwen.”  
  
Whoa boy, does that get a jolt of a reaction.  
  
“Apparently, she’s a coward and a family deserter, and that if we ever see her, he’s gonna make me - _what?! No I’m not gonna say that out loud! What do you - she’ll wash my mouth out with - argh, fine!”_  
  
“What did he say, Jaune.” Oh boy, mama bear’s losing her patience, and what Jaune’s about to say probably won’t help any.  
  
“He says that if I see her and I’m strong enough, that I should… ahem… p-punch her titties off?” He quietly squeaks out the last bit.  
  
Orion just _stares_ at Jaune.  
  
Lucia, shockingly enough, immediately bursts into hysterical, cackling laughter.  
  
“Oh my god I just imagined Jaune saying that to _Tai’s face_!” she manages to cough out between peals of laughter and _oh god it’s set off Orion too_. Now he has one hand across his mouth and the other punching his thigh in a futile attempt to control his laughter.  
  
“-Oh my god, the drunk old bird is gonna kick him across Patch-” is what I hear him gasp between desperately suppressed laugh-wheezes. Honestly, considering that Qrow still cares for his sister somewhat, I don’t doubt it.  
  
“A-A-Anyways! He says that Raven uses power to cull the weak, instead of supporting and bolstering them into something greater. And that Ozpin just uses heroes in shadow games, like he’s lost all faith in humanity as a collective and just feeds exceptional people into his war machine expecting it to change things. Cryo wants me to be the kind of hero I said I’d be, he says, and not the dumpster fire those other guys are, and _especially_ not a maniac like Salem.”  
  
They eventually stop laughing, and I can’t help but feel that the atmosphere in the room has lightened a little. Here’s hoping that my special mixture of reasoned arguments and shit-talking very powerful people has worked its magic.  
  
“I’m still antsy about this…” Orion grumbles, “...but it doesn’t look like you’re trying to harm Jaune, at least for now. On one hand, I’m happy you waited until we were here to drop all that on our heads, but...argh.”  
  
I get what he means - it’s Jaune’s life on the line here. He deserves that information, but he’s also literally twelve years old, and talking about events on the scale I just described tend to go over a kid’s head. I couldn’t protect him from it unless I managed to give that information the context and gravitas it needed. Telling his parents first was just the first opportunity I saw, even though I had to roll the dice and hope the Arc family was important enough to be in the know already.  
  
Lucia huffs. “As long as he still wants you to smack Raven, I don’t have a problem with him.”  
  
She looks at the space above Jaune’s head with a _death-glare,_ though. “But if I ever find out that you’ve gotten Jaune into trouble by not telling him things, then I promise you I will bring you back to life so that I can dismember you myself.”  
  
Shit, she could probably do it if she really put her mind to it, I dunno.  
  
“Cryo says he promises, and that he’s gonna give me the rundown while I’m at school.”  
  
“Well, that’s a relief, at least. Now, finish your breakfast and I’ll drive you to school today. No public transit, you’ll be late by the time it gets here.”  
  
We’d had that Mexican standoff for a good long while, hadn’t we? The bacon’s about to go completely cold.  
  
Jaune reaches for a fork, and makes to shovel the celebratory food-of-the-gods into his gullet to take his mind off the serious business for now.  
  
 **PING!**  
  
Everyone in the room jumps as Jaune’s fork just _shatters_ in his grip, handle half embedding itself firmly in the ceiling and prong half shattering his plate on contact.  
  
For a brief, pregnant moment, everything is silent.  
  
“Whuh- buh- I wasn’t even holding it hard!” Jaune babbles in shock.  
  
“...Jaune, we’re going to go to the doctor’s office after school. _Don’t_ use your aura in class, alright honey?”  
  
“Yes, mom...”  
  
Jaune finishes breakfast with a spare fork, and slowly but surely, the humdrum of routine sets in, even though it’s technically my first day seeing what Remnant non-Huntsman academia is like.  
  
If it’s anything like Earth’s, it’s bound to be uneventful.

* * *

  
It has been three hours, and things are becoming _very, very eventful_.  
  
To those of you in the know, you may already be aware that Jaune’s luck is, as ever, total dogshit.  
  
In keeping with that timeless tradition, Jaune finds himself here in the changing rooms of Balustrada Middle School, in the middle of PE class, pants nowhere to be seen, and hoping beyond hope that the ground just swallows him whole.  
  
I, on the other hand, am laughing and clapping like an idiot seal.  
  
...Perhaps a bit of context is necessary.  
  
It starts with a volleyball match. Jaune is up by the net. The ball’s coming towards him, and he has the opportunity to spike it.  
  
Now, Jaune’s the clumsy sort, by his own admission. Any number of things could go wrong. Perhaps he trips on his own shoelaces. Perhaps he jumps forward too far and tangles himself in the net. Perhaps he beans another player straight in the nose with a picture-perfect spike.  
  
None of this happens.  
  
Jaune leaps up, and with a mighty grunt of exertion, makes contact with the volleyball.  
  
The volleyball promptly explodes, sending bits of synthetic leather and rubber across the gymnasium floor.  
  
Jaune’s trackpants _also_ explode, sending bits of synthetic polymer and dignity through the air.  
  
He is summarily barred from participating in gym class, due to having his Aura unlocked. The pants thing certainly didn’t help, either. He is automatically given a passing grade for the class, but it is a cold comfort for a trouserless boy.  
  
We find ourselves back at the changing rooms now, with a thoroughly mortified Jaune Arc.  
  
His jeans are back on now, and by the grace of the angels, they haven’t been scattered to the four winds yet.  
  
Eventually, I stop laughing at a small child’s expense.  
  
~Wanna go to the nurse’s office and say you don’t want to be around people right now? They’re a professional, they’ll understand if you tell them.~  
  
“Yes, please,” he moans piteously.  
  
We walk out of the changing rooms, and I tease and cajole him every step of the way.  
  
...But I can’t help but be worried about this. Whatever this is, it isn’t normal. It could just be a semblance that activated prodigiously early, and the whole pants thing was just an unfortunate side-effect… but I can’t seem to shake that strange feeling that I haven’t seen the end of it.  
  
To be frank, the fact that a botched chant worked at all should have been a red flag. I don’t know if this is how it manifests, but nothing we’d read that night even comes close to supporting it. Anything that happened today would be virgin territory, so far as either Jaune or I were concerned.  
  
It’s been less than 24 hours, and already something is happening that is well and truly out of our control.  
  
I can only hope that it won’t ever become as bad as I fear it might.

* * *

  
Jaune is waiting in his school’s parking lot for his mother to pick him up, and he is currently emitting a considerable volume of Jesus.  
  
I could just say that he’s been emitting a bright white aura for the last fifteen minutes, and that every single one of his efforts to stymie it have failed, but I can’t because I use humor to come to grips with the fact that something is wrong and I am _really goddamn worried about it._  
  
Jaune just shuffles awkwardly, while people point and stare at the tasteless Christmas ornament standing in the pick-up area.  
  
The kids standing closer to him either don’t make eye contact because of the light, or are backing away while shooting suspicious glances at his pants.  
  
Predictably enough, this isn’t helping Jaune feel any less on-the-spot.  
  
Five minutes later and we see Lucia’s mahogany-coloured car pull in, as Jaune audibly groans a sigh of sweet relief.  
  
He bolts straight in, and -  
  
“Jaune, honey, why are you glowing?”  
  
“I don’t know, and I can’t figure out how to stop it. I know what my aura feels like now, and I’m pulling it back as far as I can but it’s not working. Can we just go to the doctor, please? It’s really starting to freak Cryo out. He doesn’t know what this is, either.”  
  
It’s enough to make her grimace. I’ve established myself as the spooky knowledge ghost out of necessity, even though I’m just some guy, but the fact that I’m blindsided by something is obviously not reassuring to anybody.  
  
“We’re on our way. Tell me if something hurts, okay?”  
  
“Yes, mom,” he says, as the leather of the seats starts to _crackle and hiss_.  
  
Slowly, ever so slowly, Jaune finds himself sinking lower and lower into his seat. It most certainly hasn’t escaped Lucia’s notice, not as she realizes just how much it would probably cost to replace those seats.  
  
Jaune continues to deform the seat with every passing second, and his clothes are now glowing an ominous orange hue. The right sleeve of his shirt feels oddly loose, but he doesn’t dare touch it, if the pants fiasco was any portent of things to come.  
  
“Uh, mom? I… I think my aura’s eating my clothes now.”  
  
In lieu of a response, Lucia Arc slams the gas pedal.  
  


* * *

  
  
Lucia, Jaune and I are currently running into the emergency admission desk at the local hospital.  
  
Jaune can keep up, but it’s a close thing. His breathing is heavy and he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open.  
  
‘It feels like a cold, except all over my body,’ he opines at me in his thoughts. ‘Everything’s too warm.’  
  
I don’t know how to respond, other than the usual ~You’re at the hospital now, everything’s gonna be fine.~ Mainly because I _don’t_ know if that’s the case, and the fact that this aura-backlash is obviously tied to me is fucking with me something fierce.  
  
Was this something from canon? Was it something related to me? Arc genetics? Bad luck? _Magic_?  
  
The receptionist at the desk snaps to attention at the mere mention of aura complications - it’s a familiar look, the kind I remember being on my own face once, when I used to work at a hospital and a little girl rushed in, tears down her face, saying that her father had a heart attack in the car.  
  
This familiarity does _not_ fill me with hope.  
  
A stretcher is brought in, and Jaune is hoisted onto it, leaving melted footprints on the linoleum floor. Jaune’s shoes have long since lost their bottoms, having been messily reshaped by his aura during the wait.  
  
The sheets on the stretcher fare little better, starting to sizzle in mere seconds. There’s no smoke, but the sound alone is enough to get the orderlies to rush him to the emergency room as if he were on fire.  
  
The doors swing open, and five doctors are on hand, equipment at the ready. They’re all connected to a ridiculously large machine at the side of the room, beeping and spitting out readings like something from a sci-fi movie. There are some terms below the gauges, displays and dials that aren’t abbreviations - ‘muscular integrity’, ‘concentration’ and ‘encroachment’ chief among them.  
  
One doctor - presumably the one in charge - gently pries open Jaune’s mouth, and presses two delicate-looking metal rods to the inside of his cheeks. He turns to the machine, eyes flicking from one display to another.  
  
He stops at one of them and flinches, _hard._  
  
If I wasn’t genuinely scared for Jaune’s safety yet, I sure am now.  
  
It is taking damn near everything I have to not freak out and panic. I keep Jaune - and myself - occupied by whispering ~you’ll be fine~, instead.  
  
Two other doctors bring out oxygen equipment, while another prepares a drip feed through Jaune’s hand, with a strange pulsing cylinder filled with crackling yellow powder in one hand.  
  
The cylinder of Lightning Dust - or at least I presume - pushes the Aura forcefield away from Jaune’s hand long enough to insert the drip feed needle.  
  
The stretcher is almost halfway burnt through, at this point. The fifth doctor has already wordlessly pulled Jaune up to a fresh bed with padding that looks similar to galvanized rubber, and is gently moving him over.  
  
The sizzling stops as soon as his back hits the new bed.  
  
Aura-blocking material, or perhaps aura-absorbing. I really shouldn’t be surprised that something like this exists, especially in a hospital.  
  
The head doctor attaches a syringe of white fluid to the drip feed. I recognize the stuff - general anaesthetic, or the more fun name, ‘Milk of Amnesia’.  
  
“So, you’re Mr. Arc, correct?” The doctor says, almost conversationally. Of course, it’s best to calm a person down during anaesthesia by asking them questions and distracting them from the medicine.  
  
“Mmhm,” comes the answer. Jaune hasn’t said a word until now, feverish as he was, but he musters the energy to answer.  
  
“Splendid! How was school today?”  
  
“Lost m’pants.” Jaune’s responses start slurring.  
  
“Wow. Doesn’t sound like you had the best day, huh. Do you wanna talk ab-” And that’s when my perception _lurches._  
  
I can see Jaune nodding off already, oxygen mask firmly in place. Looks like if Jaune’s down for the count because of drugs, then maybe I don’t get vision privileges either.  
  
My sight warps again, like watching water go down a drain, and-  
  
It isn’t sleep, not for me, but it is blessed blackness all the same.


End file.
